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Sunday Evening at 8:33pm
+Minecraft—on Forest’s mind continuously. +The Garden Beds—three installed so far! Back aching work and I’ll be glad when they are done. +Constantly thinking about native plants and propagating seeds to expand the native plant palate in the yard. +Feeling the tug to read fiction again after a very heavy year of non-fiction. +Wanting to write and having so many ideas that I don’t know where to start, so list writing on a blog post is how I’m going to start. +Re: writing—I want to write books. Have little time to get that done. +In the meantime I’ve been pouring my creative energy into art. My weekly nature journaling has been…
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September 2021 Rewind
We kicked off September with Forest’s birthday. He’s at such a fun age right now where his imagination is running wild and he’s still in a silly little kid phase. I love it! Earlier in the month I found two Passiflora incarnata fruit around the corner from the house. I sowed seeds of one of them and ate the other in some yogurt and ever since I ate the one I’ve been on the prowl for more. None yet! I *think* this is Dusty—but honestly, sometimes their profiles will confuse me. But both of them are cuddly cats these days! We had our first taste of fall and of course…
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First Fall Hike of the Season
Contrast it with this next one—> First family Hike North Wilderness Loop from February 2015. The weekend before Tropical Storm/Hurricane Nicholas came ashore, the three of us headed for Sam Houston National Forest to start off the fall hiking season. It had been several months since we’d done any significant hiking and the day was perfect. It was warmer than it is currently but the light had changed and you could just tell the seasons were changing. We opted for the North Wilderness Loop, a loop we’ve done before as I’ve linked above, but it has been quite a while since we hiked it. I enjoy revisiting hikes and loops…
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A Farewell to Summer from Galveston Beach
Shark eye, Neverita duplicata Cancellate Cantharus, Solenosteira cancellaria Lettered Olive, Oliva sayana Atlantic Ghost Crab, Ocypode quadrata The good (and bad) things about having a kid in school is that there are now random holidays in the middle of the month that adults don’t typically get—teacher work days for one. Forest had one of these on Monday and rather than splitting the day and each of us working from home part of it, we took the day off and went to the beach. We had several things going for us: late September, it being a Monday, and not a normal holiday. I was hoping it wouldn’t be very crowded and…
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A New Find
Earlier this summer I decided I wanted to get back into using a FitBit. After finding a very basic and cheap model for $20 on NextDoor, I was set up to start walking challenges with friends again. I’ve had a Garmin watch for several years now and actually love it, but there are less folks I know in real life using it as their preferred fitness watch. I ended up having to switch to a better FitBit later on that I found, also for a steal, because the cheap, basic version was cheap and basic and fell apart. Suffice to say, I lept back into walking challenges this summer and…
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August 2021 Rewind
The first of August and the end of August seem like entirely different years. I came home from my weekend away from friends and peered out the window in the stairwell and thought the garden was looking lovely. That tropical cactus makes me so happy when I see it and it is growing like crazy right now. Rusty is becoming *my* cat in many ways. He’s also a bit of a jerk, albeit a cute jerk. He loves to cuddle while I watch tv and will sleep up next to me in bed only after he’s been very demanding about getting pets on his head. He loves his scritches but…
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Grabbing Hold of The Feeling
We had stayed up beyond midnight the night before, talking and catching up despite that it was well passed our middle aged bedtimes. Bleary-eyed I woke up on Saturday morning as the sun broke through the curtain in the loft upstairs. I rolled over a couple of times, got on my phone to distract myself, and then finally convinced myself that I should get out of bed and do the thing I wanted to do, which was explore the pastures on the property of the AirBnB we were staying at. Downstairs, Michelle and Stephanie were already awake. Steph had made coffee and the two of them were talking quietly while…
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Mid-Summer Nature Tidbits | Neighborhood Nature
Summer is slipping away and I feel like I have had my head down and haven’t been enjoying nature the last couple of weeks. Everything is happening in a blur. But the monarchs are here again, not that they totally left this summer, but we’ve had more hanging around this last week than I’ve seen since spring. And they’ve been leaving evidence of their progeny all over the place. I get a kick out of watching them methodically chow down on a milkweed leaf! I have not been able to identify this caterpillar yet. I found it on the path leading to our office and moved it over to a…
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July 2021 Rewind
It’s feels like the first of July was in one year and the end of it was in another. What a long month it was! Apparently at the first of the month I was hanging out with a toad friend from the yard. Thank goodness for photos because I had completely forgotten about this happening! Before Chris and I left for San Antonio the weekend of the 4th I noticed that the pipevine chrysalis that was on Chris’ man-cave door had eclosed with a very fresh pipevine swallowtail butterfly. I was loading stuff into the car and noticed it was clinging to the chrysalis so I went in to grab…
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Another Trip Around the Sun
The last five weeks have been a whirlwind of go-go-go! We have been making up for our lack of going in 2020. We spent two weekends up in DFW, then Chris and I went to San Antonio solo, and then we picked Forest up from my parents who met us in Waco and then the three of us traveled down to Dripping Springs for my birthday weekend. Another trip around the sun! Last weekend Forest and I were home by ourselves as Chris was in Mississippi working so we were able to recuperate somewhat from all of that busyness. But two weekends away in AirBnBs were magnificent and the little…